Art

The first selection is better. It is still pretty big at 1.5 inches but not unmanageable. The ones with the wood handles are for a different type of skiving although they can be used for edge skiving. When edge skiving, you either hold the blade by wrapping your fingers around it on one thin side and your thumb on the other or you hold it somewhat like a pencil. The one with the wooden handle is used to pare-down leather as you would do on a belt buckle end. Watch this video. The knife in the center is a Bob Beard. She doesn't sell them anymore as they are hard to get from Bob. I have never dealt with this guy, but these knives look good and are reasonably priced. Art

For traditional skiving, the shoe type skiving knives from Lisa Sorrell are pretty good. The best I have found are the skiving knives from Robert Beard although the wait time might be a little long. You can use a round knife to skive, but generally the smaller the better. The Leather Wranglers Tranto and Guppy will do a decent job skiving as will their "Full Sized" round knife I have the round knife and the Tranto and they both work well for a lot of things. If you are doing intricate skiving like for filigree on boot tops (that will be backed), you will need a smaller knife like a 3/4 inch shoe knife, or my old friends, the surgical scalpels. Learn to master these two types and you won't need anything else; and you know what...they are also the least expensive. Art

Josh, Yes, run 277 on top and 207 in the bobbin. You can switch to 207 on top without much hassle maybe a tension tweak to keep the lock in the middle. Use a #24/180 needle. Art

Yep, I've had days like that too. Since it is your business, and you are in top management; it is often necessary to try and turn lemons into lemonade. Just call them and try and work it out painlessly. Maybe they can just send you the square ends you need and make it painless for everyone. You gotta give them a chance, they have to run their business too, and quite often with help who knows no more about leatherworking than I do about alligator hunting. Art

Most of us that do varied work will have more than one machine. However to be clear, it is not primarily the thickness you put under the foot, it is the size thread you are sewing with. You can put Z-207 or Z-277 thread in it and adjust it to sew 1/2 inch of leather. You can then sew a couple of 2 oz pieces of leather together adjusting the tension some; you can even sew a dollar bill with that setup. The one thing you really won't be doing is changing the thread size all the time. One size either side of your setup thread size and you can get it going with just a little fiddlin', maybe not even changing the needle, but going down or up two or three sizes is going to require a lot of extra setup. I have known folks who have done this, and their machines never really sew right; you set it up for say Z-138 and you are back there next week adjusting it again because they just had to run Z-69. When I was sailing and racing, I ran with a few sailmakers and took care of their machines for them. They ran every brand of medium duty machine ever made and 92 monofilament with clutch motors from the Starship Enterprise day in and day out and they almost never had problems. Set it up, run it, stop to change bobbins or spools. The lesson here is to set it up, run it, and leave it alone, you can put anything under the foot, it will probably sew it. You want to run something like a different size thread or needle, get another machine. These are industrial machines, they go in factories, they do one thing day after day; that's how they roll. Art

Buy the Cowboy 3200. Shop for and find a Singer 31-20 and use that for the light stuff. The dealer may be able to plug you into one. The 31-20 will sew 33, 46, and 69 threads beautifully. They are not hard to find and a really, really, good one can be found with a roller foot for under $200, sometimes under $100. Art

Ok, both these machines are very good, but they are two different animals. The Cobra 22618-8b is a medium to heavy duty machine, more on the medium end. The Cowboy 3200 is a heavy duty to medium duty machine, much more on the heavy end. It comes down to two very different needle and bobbin systems. The 22618-8b uses the 135-16/17 needle system and can run up to a #24 or so needle, it is very much like the Cowboy 227R. The Cowboy 3200 utilizes a 794 needle system that can run a #27 needle, a real nail. The hook/shuttle systems are totally different, the Cowboy made to handle larger thread. You will sacrifice on one end of the sewing range or the other, you have to determine what kind of work you do. If you do a lot of 69 and 94 thread, get the Cobra or Cowboy 227R, if OTOH you sew a lot of 207 and 277, the 3200 would be your ticket. If you do a lot of what one machine or the other won't do as good or better than the other, your choice is simple. Art

On a recommendation, I have tried Renia Aquilim 315. I like this product with one reservation. Being water based, it doesn't dry to the point that you would stick it together ON WET LEATHER. On dry leather I let the glue dry for 20 to 30 minutes before putting it together. If you use a thin coat, it will dry faster. Blow dryer/heat gun is a quicker option. Two thin coats are better than one thick one, but it is that way with most contact cements. Put it together and it stays together, no play at all. Silicone brushes from Rockler are cheap and work well, either leave them in the pot or if you let them dry overnight, the glue peels off easily in pretty much one big glop. The advantage is there is little (if any?) smell. On hot summer and cold winter days, the fume extraction pulls the conditioned air out of the shop with most contact adhesives, no need for fume extraction with the Aquilim 315. I think I will be using a lot more of this stuff from now on. I will keep using Renia Colle de Cologne for applications where I need wet leather compatibility, the Ethyl Acetate solvent is a little better than the Toluene solvent in the "real" Barge and Master cements, both smell and health wise. I recommend the T-S Boy glue containers for the Aquilim products as you can keep the brushes inside the cap so they don't dry out. The brush that comes with them is not good for use with the Aquilim products. Do not buy the Chinese version of these, they leak. The T-S Boy containers are from Germany. I don't use the T-S Boy containers for solvent based contact cements as there isn't an easy way to add thinner and slosh it around like you can on one of the bottles with the brush in the cap (pour the thinner in, screw on the cap, and shake). Eventually, the solvent based cements won't take thinner anymore and just lays in a glop in the bottom of the bottle. You have to get it out and put in fresh cement and you are good to go. I can't figure how that is going to happen with the T-S Boy container, or even IF it will happen with the Aquilim. Art

My beater 441 (it is a Highlead) will do it, ditto of course the Campbell, but let's face it, we're talking an "18 oz" luan sandwich on a machine (111) on which 18 oz leather is a practical maximum. I've went heavier, at the expense of a few needles. One of the problems is that the torsion you can apply to that big panel will bend the needle to the point of a needle strike. Practicality says sew a fake border and glue to the panel; you'd probably glue anyway. It will look great. Art

First, where in Europe. Second, Dixon is currently out of business, and has been for a while. The last "Dixon" tools I saw didn't have any name on them. Vergez Blanchard makes a good screw crease which should be easy for you to get in Europe. For tools across the pond try this Leatherworker thread. Art

First, is it a BOSS or is it an Aerostitch? If a BOSS, is it Iron or Aluminium? According to Marketplace rules, we need some kind of price. A picture would be helpful. Art

A summary: Cutoff above the burr should be around 1/8 inch (about 3mm for the metric crowd). This is going to vary with your setter and or style, some folks just use a hammer and make some pretty peens. I use a lot of burr rivets in some of my gear, unfortunately, a whole lot of them are brass and are bitchin' hard; you will soon find the proper length after you go through 10 or 20 of them. Copper is a dream after the brass, and again, the cutoff length becomes obvious after doing a few. Cutting off the stud after setting the burr can be a problem. It seems like an easy thing to do, but the wrong tool will bugger the end which may not be pretty when you peen it over. The problem is crushing the end, and it is almost always due to either misaligned jaws, dull jaws, or usually, both. The choices available to accomplish cutoff, are saw or nip. Using a hacksaw or even a jewelers saw on a rivet with the burr set in a piece of leather can reasonable be compared to a monkey whumping a football, so I have to dismiss that one. The Dremel or Foredom works like a dream with a cutoff blade, but throws miniscule pieces of the rivet all over the work; you have to determine if you can deal with that. One teenage girl in a house with glitter makeup would convince you of the folly of having what amounts to copper (or brass in my case) glitter in the shop; metal shop, not a problem, leather shop, not so much. Sooooooo, nippers are the items used most. End nippers to be exact. I have both American Klein and German Irwin side cutters and end nippers. These things are really made for electrical wire and thinner piano wire, and are excellent tools, BUT not so much for hacking off rivets. That leaves us with blacksmith nippers, made for cutting soft to medium hard steel. Bruce has recommended Todd nippers, and I agree. I have a few pairs in size 1, 2, and 3. They made 0 through 6 I believe, with 0 being pretty big and 6 too small. Pexto and Carew also made removable cutter pliers, in my opinion, not quite a good as the Todds. None of these tools is commercially available anymore as they would have to sell for over $100, so eBay or a local tool auction is probably the best bet to get a decent pair for South of $30. Jaw condition and fit-up (how the edges come together) is important. There should be very little "wobble" in the pin that holds the handles together. A little work can make an old set of nippers really useable for clipping off those posts. Dressing the edges with a grinder or file can work wonders especially if the edges are dull or pitted. They don't have to be knife sharp (and shouldn't be), but they should come to an edge instead of a rounded corner. Don't get all aggressive on a bad ding or two, as long as you have a clean edge somewhere to cut the rivet. If the edges are totally trashed and you can't fix it, don't buy that one. Once you get them to cut cleanly, stop, you have went far enough. If you cut-off a rivet and it doesn't leave enough post to peen, glue a 2 oz or more piece of veg tan on the top of the jaws to make them clip to the length you like. Enough about nippers. Anvil. Every leatherworker or metalworker should have one (or more in my case). Please do not use your stone you use for tooling. Irresistible force (hammer) must meet immovable object (anvil) with the rivet in the middle. A block of steel, a railroad rail, a piece of I or H beam or other smooth hard surface, or an actual anvil will work well. That little anvil that leather stores sell is ok, just barely. A 30 lb Harbor Freight is better and a 288 lb Hay-Budden works well too. A big piece of steel or the 30 lb HF anvil is good because you won't be a great loss when you drill holes or indents in them to hold things like rivet heads, Sam Brown studs, and other things you don't want to deform or dimple. If you get one of those mini anvils, you have to put it on something solid, not a wobbly kitchen table. It is not uncommon around here to see the 30 lb HF anvil sitting on top of the irreplaceable Hay. I guess it all gets down to pounding. I used the Heritage setters I got from Weaver for years, they work fine. Sometimes they will leave a mark on the leather, chalk it up to operator error (however, it is always more convenient to blame the tool). I bought a set of setters from Vandy at Sheridan Leather Outfitters that are made by Bob Douglas. This is a nice set of three that #1 set the burr, #2 peen the post, and finally #3 that will dome the rivet head on the other side. Doming the head is not necessary if the head won't be seen, however it is just classy. There was some question as to the rivets being harder when set. When you bend, hammer, or "work" brass or copper, it is called work hardening. That is why the set rivets (especially the peened posts and heads) are harder than the unset ones. Art

Take a picture and post it here. This could be anything from a light cleanup and repair to OMG this thing is toast. Art

Parts Manual Art

Oil it definitely, just remove the thread from the needle, you can leave the bobbin in, in addition to the needle, but remove the thread from the needle. You can run it as much as you like without hurting anything. Art

The leather is moving at an inappropriate time. Pull it through by hand and see what's happening. If there is a groove opener on the needle plate, is it sharp and properly aligned. Art

Never seen a key to hold on the bobbin, must be the deluxe version. There are three screws holding your winder onto the table, loosen them, then push the whole winder into (toward) the belt a bit. Then tighten the screws. This should move the winder wheel into the belt a little further for better contact. You're getting there; take it step by step, we're here and will leave the light on for you. Art

Hardtke is on-line, order by phone. Art

Hi Gregg, It started with Motors, then progressed to belt fitting (drive belt), and then it was off to Bobbin Winders. All pretty much a progression to get the same user up and running. Art

Pry it apart a little till the bobbin fits snugly, then take the screwdriver out. Art

Chinese adjustable diameter bobbin shaft. Simple fix with 38 cents left over. Art

1mm is going to be a little thin for a fall. I would go with a white fall for a bullwhip, that is more a personal preference kind of thing. I big piece of 11 or 12 oz bull back would also work. Art

Correct, 60% NF, but you can vary it a bit, more on the NF side I think. I used to have an old turkey roaster (electric with a cloth cord so it had to be '50s vintage). I would put the whole thing in for 15 seconds or more, pull it out and hang it up to drain. The formulation for NF has probably changed some in that time, but it will be somewhat the same. Art

There are different ways to thread every machine, most of the differences are to introduce more or less top tension in the thread. The bobbin tension determines how much top tension is required among other things, like the thread and needle sizes. Because we tend to sew thicker work in tough stuff like leather, we tend to set the bobbin tensions quite high which requires quite a bit of top tension; hence, you will see a lot of extra winds and often using all the holes on a guide to help get there. If you do a lot of light work, then you need a lot less bottom tension (and comparable top tension) to keep the thread from buckling the work. If you need light tension, you can't go hitting all the guide holes or double wrapping the tension disks. Art

Back when I was doing a lot of hunting and camp knives and sheaths, I used to get a lot of calls for that. I used a 60/40 mix of neatsfoot and beeswax at about 160F if I remember right. Remember to put a hole in the bottom of the sheath for the water to run out. It worked very well, but haven't had a call for something like that in at least 15 years. Art